Turmoil Engulfs Trump DOJ

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0:55Create your own AI agent in minutes on Monday.com. Welcome to The Beat. I'm Ari Melber. We're following what is tough news for the Trump DOJ. As a top Jeffrey Epstein employee is testifying, we're also tracking another primary election day, South Carolina, Nevada, North Dakota, and Maine, all seeing voters turn out. Democrat Graham Plattner is facing voters as he brings a new spirit and also his share of controversies to the Democrats' national midterm message. We will turn to our live reporters for a look at what's happening on the ground and the latest in turnout, which should have some interesting clues.

1:30That will be later this hour on another primary election day. Right now, though, our top story is the Epstein scandal roaring back on Capitol Hill. The very outcome President Trump has tried and failed to prevent. Congress drawing new testimony from a key witness, Epstein's assistant of 18 years. Lawmakers now following leads that the Trump DOJ and its predecessors apparently abandoned or worse that Trump officials recently hid. So it's vital to recall how we got here, even if Donald Trump wishes this was not the top story tonight. First, last year, then Attorney General Bondi claimed in writing that there was actually no evidence for any other investigations against third parties who had not already been charged in this Epstein probe.

2:20And remember, she also said there should be no further disclosure of any Epstein files. That was her memo. That was the Trump-Bondi plan to bury and hide the Epstein files. It failed, as you know. Indeed, it was the Epstein files which later exposed how FBI investigators previously tracked several suspected co-conspirators, revealed in this long secret document that actually only came out when we started getting the Epstein files. We reported on it that night and in other reports, and I'll get into that, but what you're looking at is important because this was the then secret DOJ effort to diagram Epstein's then uncharged inner circle.

3:08And if you notice the lower left where we've added a square, this is government evidence, but we've added that square for your understanding of what's important today. that diagram includes today's witness, Leslie Groff. Now we've reported on the timeline, the denials, the secrecy, the leaks, until these later files showed those abandoned leads. This was our case timeline. You remember how it all came back to life. And Groff matters more, perhaps, than some of Epstein's lawyers and accountants. You see the suspect list that was released there on the right. That's the one I'm talking about. She had the widest visibility on his plans and communications with all kinds of people, including some of the people you see on your screen who've only gotten in trouble or faced any kind of accountability since these files came out, the ones that I just reminded you, Bondi tried to hide and said in writing shouldn't be released.

4:03So before I tell you what she said today, and it's stuff that Donald Trump wishes wasn't in the news, remember that she was on the emails and in the arranged meetings for the powerful, for the staff, to the women. I need to go back a little bit. We're going back. Hold on. I want to slow down and tell you guys this. She was at the center. She was on site. So she was an eyewitness. You can see how many times she's in the files and an email witness because she was on so many emails, her name appears more than anyone else. And she kept working for Epstein through his 2019 arrest, arranging the meetings with so many figures.

4:40So that's why it matters that now after all these years she showed up, you can see today, this is what happened today, showed up to testify to Congress. And in a time of great skepticism about our government, and it took people and pressure to get here, but under public pressure, I want you to understand that the Democrats on the committee who've pushed hard for this and 26 Republicans came around, perhaps under pressure, but still came around to demanding this on a bipartisan basis. I'm not telling you we're all good and everything works. We're far from that. But I am telling you that people who said two years ago, well, how would you make the Congress do anything?

5:19And how could you get the Republicans on board? It would make Trump look bad. Well, here we are today, a bipartisan effort to get her and these other witnesses to speak to Congress, which again is supposed to represent you in the pursuit of the truth. So Groff's lawyer now says she was disgusted by Epstein conduct. She testified today that he was a monster, a master manipulator and a deceiver, separating his legitimate life from a secret life as an abuser. She recounts that she first took the job for about$50 ,000 a year, and that she tackled everything from scheduling to mundane tasks. She describes having to ensure today that he had his reading glasses at every single table at his home, so he never had to look for it.

6:00She told the committee that sometimes very late in the day, she'd have to source a dozen chocolate croissants made in New York to be delivered to Palm Beach by nine the next morning. amid those kind of details she also asserts that she learned epstein was actually a kind of a dr jekyll and mr hyde character so her version of events now that you see how central she was and i've reminded you how trump and bondi fought for this ever to come out her version of events is still that epstein somehow hid his entire enterprise from her even as she carried out this daily schedule and met his demands before i go more deeply into what she says which is a kind of a defense of what she knew at the time, I want to give you a testimonial fact check.

6:43I'm reporting on her testimony. That's what she says. Before we go any further, I want you to know what other survivors say. They disagree with her account that she couldn't see any of this. They've previously stated that this key witness, Groff, arranged appointments with one victim when she was a minor and that it was, quote, pretty obvious Leslie knew what was going on, an account given to the FBI in 2021. Groff told the FBI that she viewed booking Epstein's massages as a kind of standard appointment. But now that the public can see all the Epstein files, which again, we never had before, and which the FBI did have, the claim that these were just typical massages makes basically no sense.

7:27For example, this witness was arranging payments that were much, much higher than the most expensive massage services available. And this is what investigators do. You don't always have all the evidence to show, oh, someone admitted a crime, but here was an arrangement for a thousand dollar payment in 2017, which is about$1 ,300 today, just accounting for inflation. Even top five-star spas don't charge$1 ,300 for the best sort of most celebrated masseuse they have in the most expensive resorts. She also cited payments to a girl for time spent on the island. Her other past emails, which we only got, of course, recently, show her awareness that one girl could not come because she was at school till 10 p.m.

8:13Others show a type of paid activity that goes beyond, say, an hour massage. She arranged at Epstein's request for a paid visit at the house that would start around three, but staying into the evening. So that's just some of what we know. Today, speaking to the committee, she played down knowing that kind of thing. Lawmakers say that she was just distancing herself from what Epstein did. She saw no misconduct, she claims. One Democrat saying they want to get Groff on the record so that when we find out later she was lying, quote, we can arrest her. Lawmakers expressing their doubts about her claimed sort of naivete.

8:52It is highly inconsistent what she's maintaining that she really didn't know Jeffrey Epstein. She arranged young women for massages with a registered sex offender. And I just question whether she can rightfully and truthfully maintain that she saw nothing improper. That's one lawmaker's informed skepticism. Now, Groff's claims of ignorance, what, by the way, under law can sometimes be deemed willful blindness, are also under pressure from the public accounts of Epstein's earlier misconduct and his famed Florida conviction. Now, I want you to know, like I said, we're going to tell you what happened today.

9:39This is new. This is brand new as of today. We didn't know this a few hours ago. Groff did try to address the Epstein history. she told lawmakers that after his arrest in 08, Epstein lied to me and insisted he'd been blackmailed. He angrily said the allegations against him were false, that he had no idea that the woman he had contact with was a minor. In my mind, that was the reason he was treated so leniently by law enforcement for such a serious crime. Now, from the FBI to Congress, informed investigators have to weigh that kind of denial with how much else Groff would be in a position to witness or see.

10:16and how much she helped arrange, as documented in the emails and Epstein files, which, under no other criminal case that we've covered in history, would you get all the emails. So the old defense looks a little different when the public now has access to the things that the FBI and DOJ had for years, and sometimes did very little with. Lawmakers also asking today if she arranged any contact between Epstein and Trump. Did she talk about scheduling meetings between Mr. Epstein and President Trump? Basically, arranging phone calls, I believe, was the most of it. Just contact between, you know, just arranging phone calls between President Trump and Mr.

10:59Epstein, yes. Did she get the timeline out of when they were talking? I believe she referred to a time before Mr. Trump was president. So that's going back. to a period where we know they were having contact and sometimes socializing. She maintains she had no knowledge of any criminal activity, and she has never been charged. Survivors, though, and some legal experts say that may be the problem. They question how the FBI identified and mapped these suspected co-conspirators, some of them, as you see, redacted, and yet did not apparently legally pursue any except Maxwell, who's now getting those unusually favorable requests met as she gets special treatment from the Trump DOJ.

11:51We are here learning new things. And as some lawmakers said, if the denials do not hold up over time under the weight of evidence and investigation, getting them before Congress, it's a crime to lie to Congress, is itself useful. There are many different elements to the long-running Epstein scandal. And while some people rush to say, well, this means they can assume the worst about anyone they don't like for political or other reasons, and that has certainly contributed to some of the heat, that's not actually what matters. What does matter, and what Donald Trump's DOJ is a part of, is how long the government has hid and misled about the very facts we now have continuing to come out.

12:35And perhaps it's a political irony for Donald Trump that by fighting this so hard, he has dragged dependency of this discussion and news cycle closer and closer to the next election in the midterms. Just as he dragged one of the Epstein rebels, Tom Massey, through the most expensive primary in American history just to try to get rid of him, which raises the question, why are you so committed to fighting? every lawmaker and every survivor and every witness who has something to say about this sordid history. It's a story that's not going away. And we have special informed guests on this when I'm back with you in 90 seconds.

13:22We're back with civil rights attorney Nancy Erica Smith and Tara Palmieri, a veteran journalist who writes the red letter on Substack and has covered this story extensively. Nancy, I walked through how we got here because it matters so much to understand both the secrecy and this witness. Your view of what we learned today. Well, my view is it took a lot of enablers to allow Jeffrey Epstein to conduct a child sexual abuse ring for decades. And many of those enablers probably have in their mind that Donald Trump gives out pardons to people who may need them or who will protect him or who will pay him, of course, but who will protect him.

14:05She had a non-prosecution agreement in 2008 to say that she didn't know anything. All this time after he was convicted is just not believable. setting up massages three times a day, knowing that there's a cleaner, a janitor who testified that they sanitized the massage rooms three times a day. I mean, even Howard Lutnick says that the townhouse was creepy and he didn't want to go back because of the massage rooms. And if she may have known and the FBI was concerned that she and others crossed over into criminal conduct, why were none of them held accountable? How do you view sort of her history there.

14:44Well, women don't matter and children don't matter when you're comparing them to powerful, rich men. It's just this history of the whole world that we don't matter the way powerful, connected, rich men matter. So he got a pass from the star Alex Acosta got to be Trump's first labor secretary by giving Epstein, who everybody has to admit was a close friend of Trump for quite a few years. So, Alex, everybody got rewarded. And now Todd Blanch, who defended Trump in the E. Jean Carroll case, is nominated to be the attorney general after giving a sweetheart deal to a convicted child sexual predator.

15:34She's in club fed prison with a dog, apparently. I mean, you know, so if I wanted a pardon, if I participated, if I enabled this kind of child sexual abuse ring, I would say I didn't know anything. I would lie. Because if you get indicted, you are hoping that by covering up for Trump and his friends and the other powerful people that you're going to get a pardon. And then briefly, because I want to bring in Tara, is your view that the FBI or any solid investigator should have known better but had other reasons not to? Yes. Yeah, definitely. Tara, your view on all this? You know, it's interesting that Leslie was called this week because there is a prosecution memo that U.S.

16:18Attorney Jeff Berman put together in 2019, shortly after he arrested Jeffrey Epstein. And it was about potential co-conspirators. And And again, Leslie Groff is named as one, and it shows that the FBI actually interviewed her lawyer. So again, she knew that she was a target in this case. She was unwilling to give any information. And, you know, I look through some of the files that Jane Doe's filed, and one of them, Jane Doe 45, said that she booked their travel. She handled visas, accommodation, and, quote, rules of behavior. I mean, how could a woman who worked for him from 2001 to 2019, who was in her 30s and 40s, not know what was going on?

17:06Jennifer Rose, another victim of Jeffrey Epstein, also remembered. Groff said she was critical in facilitating Epstein's abuse. Not to mention the fact that when the FBI, I'm sorry, the local Palm Beach police, when they raided his home in 2006, there were so many pictures of underage girls on the walls and everywhere else. And there's so many witness accounts of young girls walking around naked from people who worked there that it's undeniable what was going on. I'm just angry that she is another person who is a potential co-conspirator who is able to speak to Congress not under oath in this interview setting.

17:48I mean, these people need to be held to account. The other thing I want to mention, too, is that when I looked at this memo, this 86-page memo that Jeff Berman put together, the names of powerful men are mentioned that girls accused of sexual abuse, including Leon Black, Jess Staley, Prince Andrew, and Harvey Weinstein. They are named as sexual abusers in this memo. But instead, the prosecutors are only focused on the women who facilitated the abuse. It's all about the women. And it shows you again what Nancy mentioned. This is not they're not interested in pursuing these men. In fact, every time a woman brought up it undersworn death, like undersworn testimony, what her experience was with this man.

18:32They named it matter of factly, but had no interest in following up. Yeah. Well, I have you because you've covered this a lot. What do you think of the point that perhaps only under pressure and being dragged there? But unlike other issues, there was at least finally this bipartisan push to take this step long overdue. Do you see that as a difference from years ago on the Hill or what do you think is happening there? I just think that interviewing Leslie Groff, you're not getting to the heart of the matter. You need to be interviewing the men. You need to get Leon Black up there. You need to get Jeff Staley up there.

19:06I mean, I know Bill Gates is coming this week. This is just it just feels like it's a political show. And yes, Leslie knows some things, but you're never going to get anything out of her unless it's under oath. And even then it's it's behind closed doors. Why? Why can't we watch this? Why can't why is this not being televised? This is the biggest deal of our time. Yeah. And to your point, they were rushing to get the Hillary Clinton video out, you know. Yeah. And again, as mentioned, you've been you've been on this. Nancy, on the legal side, again, I said I would quote her account. She says, after Mr.

19:45Epstein's conviction, I learned the government and his lawyers included me in the non-prosecution agreement as a potential conspirator. She says today, quote, I am not a conspirator and I never would have agreed to this language. Their decision to label me as a potential conspirator remains my scarlet letter. Oh, good. Then she should disavow the non-prosecution agreement and put herself out there to testify under oath in public and be confronted, literally confronted with some of the evidence you've shown today. If she wants to disavow the non-prosecution agreement and say, oh, I didn't know, I wouldn't have agreed not to be prosecuted.

20:23She literally says that. Good. Let's prosecute. Yeah, so you don't buy it. I don't buy it one bit. And the reason we're here to answer your question earlier is because Trump and MAGA talked about a big Democratic pedophile ring and a lot of Republicans ate it up. And so they're stuck with it now that this is what they told people they were concerned about. Oh, my God, sex abuse of children in a pizza place in Washington. They drummed this up and now they want to walk away. And people like Massey, who believed it and cared about it, are the victims. Yeah. Both of you have been all over this and also passionate on it, which is why we thought of you, Tara and Nancy.

21:04Thanks to both of you for joining me tonight. Thank you. Appreciate it. We have a lot going on. Michael Steele is here. There's panic over the midterms of the Republican Party and the DOJ meltdown over the losing conspiracy cases.

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22:37But Mr. President... Your one-sided crooked network. Sorry, let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time. Mr.

22:46President... Holy... storming out because he didn't like the question? Now, you could view this as the hissy fit of an incredibly fragile man-baby whose paper-thin skin can't handle venturing out of the sycophantic embrace of his tongue-bathing acolytes. Or, actually, I don't know how else you could deal with it. It really is just that. The signs that Trump can't handle the truth, the Times also reporting he's previewing a midterm plan to attack a vote that apparently he's worried about losing, questioning the results now in these California primaries. No evidence on that. And it follows a longer set of struggles at the DOJ, which brings us to our acclaimed guest, Devlin Barrett, the New York Times reporter who's had multiple prize-winning reports along with his colleagues, and he's the author of the book The Department of Revenge, How Trump Took Control of American Justice.

23:41It's out today, and we're glad you could join us today. Congrats on the book. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Yeah. People have been reading, of course, The New York Times have seen some of that reporting, including this effort to revive what you liken to and your sources discuss as almost a Frankenstein legal project that largely seems doomed. Tell us about that. So, right. So when you listen to people like Kash Patel talk about what he calls the deep state, all these accusations are sort of built around this notion that government agencies conspired for years to block Donald Trump in various ways.

24:14The grand conspiracy case that Kash Patel initiated and has been pushing for the last year and year and change is is really the culmination of that argument. But it's built on a an incredibly flimsy evidentiary basis, a set of evidence that career prosecutors have looked at over and over again and said they can't see criminal cases to be built from them. But still, because the Trump administration has such a tight grip on the Justice Department, they keep pushing it forward and they keep looking, searching for a prosecutor who will take it to the next step. Under law, the FBI are federal police.

24:56Police do police work. They develop evidence and facts and then prosecutors weigh the evidence. That second step is supposed to insulate us with some more independence. Right. You report that for the first time that we know of since Nixon, the FBI director is calling individual prosecutors at DOJ who do not report to him and demanding they do things. How did you, without revealing your sources, but how do you develop reporting on that, your firm on that? That itself is, in any other era, is a scandal. What's going on there? So it's just not the way this is meant to work. And there are rules in place and there are systems in place to prevent this from happening for this very reason.

25:35Prosecutors prosecute, agents investigate. And just to pick one fairly recent example that everyone can remember that caused a lot of controversy at the time, remember James Comey's handling of the Clinton email investigation was a, I would argue, a misuse of these roles to begin with. That didn't go well for him. This is not going well for them. And the broader context is in the administration's efforts to make the machinery of justice do this, they are, you know, wrecking some of these offices. They are forcing people out. They are, you know, careers are retiring or resigning because they simply cannot go along with some of the demands being made of them to pursue these types of cases.

26:20Right. And you get the same version of the fight at CBS. How long do you stay inside and protest? And when do you leave? Because to even be there is illicit. You get that version at DOJ itself and across other agencies. You write in the book that with Blanche, Bondi, Patel basically seizing the DOJ, the old principles of discretion are discarded. They operate under these rules of personal connections to power, politics, desire by the president for revenge. At what point when you're writing this up, being as fair as you are as an objective New York Times reporter, do you also figure out how to say, not for political or partisan reasons, but on the evidence, this is unlawful.

27:07This is under the way that our system is set up, this is wrong. So already you're starting to see judges move toward that. You saw in the indictments of James Comey and Letitia James, a judge say the appointment that created, that essentially spawned those indictments was unlawful. The thing to keep in mind, and I think sometimes we forget about this and the politics of it is that the Justice Department is not like the Department of Agriculture. It's not like the Department of Commerce. There has all for a very long time been an understanding that the White House should not be directing with, based on political whim or political interest, criminal investigations and prosecutions.